The Book Hunger

./The book hunger Edited by. Ronald Barker and Robert Escarpit

Unesco Paris 1973 Harrap London

The book hunger

Published by the United Nations Educational,Scientificand Cultural Organization, 7 Placo de Fonlenoy, 75700 Paris, and George G.Harrap &Co. Ltd, 182184 High Holborn, London WClV 7AX Printed by Imprimerie Atar, Geneva I S B N 92-3-101085-9(Unesco) 0-245-52071-6(Harrap) French edition: 92-3-201085-2(Unesco)

O UIICSCO 1973 Printed bi Switzerland

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Preface

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Two-thirds of the men, women and children in the world today are handicapped in their search for a better and fuller life by lack of one of the essential tools of progress: books and reading material. Efforts to learn, to acquire a greater understanding of scientific and technical developments and to appreciate the contributions of culture depend in large measure on the availability of printed matter. In Asia, Africa,Latin America and the Arab States,in varying degrees, there is an acute shortage of books. Low production,inadequate distribution channels and the high cost of inporting sufficient numbers ofbooks combineto deprive the public ofthe reading materials they need.Only one title out of every five produced today originates in a developing country.Of the more than 500,000titles which are issued every year-a new book a minute-80 per cent come from the countries of Europe,plus Japan,the Soviet Union and the United States. Even in the developed countries,reading is far less widespread than might be expected in view ofthe booming production ofbooks. In a period of an information explosion, books face the rising competition of the newer electronic media ofmass communication. Yet the book remains the simplestand most effective means for the transfer of knowledge. Since its establishment, Unesco has consistently concerned itself with the world of the book as it affects the fields of education, science, and culture. At its thirteenth session, Unesco’s General

Conference stressed the importance of books as a means of promoting the Organization’s objectives. At its fourteenth session,it approved a long-term programme for book development which resulted in the convening of a series of regional meetings between the years 1966 and 1972 in the developing world which were designed to promote the production and distribution of books. These meetings demonstrate that there is a desire for a new effort to make more effective application of books for education and economic and social development. The present book, exploring the causes of book hunger and the solutions that are available, draws upon previous studies and the conclusions of the expert meetings. Edited by Ronald Barker, Secretary of the Publishers’Association of the United Kingdom, and by Professor Robert Escarpit of the University of Bordeaux,it was written under their supervision and expresses views which are not necessarily those of Unesco. Inevitably in the light of their respective experiences,certain subjects tended to fall more particularly to one or the other editor. Thus, Mr Barker, the author of Booksfor All, published by Unesco in 1956, assumed special responsibility for the sections on copyright,production and distribution,while Professor Escarpit,author of The Book Revolution,published by Unesco in 1966, was more concerned with the needs of the developing nations,the role ofthe author and the reading habit. Mr Barker and Professor Escarpit undertook this project as part of a general reassessment of the present situation of books stimulated by the proclamationby Unesco of 1972 as InternationalBook Year. Under the slogan ‘Booksfor All’,International Book Year was given four main themes: encouragement of authorship and translation with due regard to copyright;production and distribution of books, including the development of libraries;promotion of the reading habit;and books in the service of education,international understanding and peaceful co-operation. ‘It is hoped that this publication, which brings to each of these themes the considered opinions of experts, may result in a wider understanding ofthe role ofbooks today,particularly in developing countries which have such need for national production and distribution. It may, therefore, contribute to an easing of the still prevalent book hunger in the world.

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Contents Editor’s acknowledgements 9

Chapter 1 The book hunger 11 2 Bookproduction 31 3 Future trends 56 4 Distribution 67 5 Copyright 88 6 Reading habits 103 7 Conclusions 130 Appendix

Charter of the book 151

Editor’s acknowledgements This book which,in International Book Year,is the result of contributions by many hands and the accumulation of knowledge from many lands endeavours, as the Preface indicates,to highlight the problem of ‘bookhunger’-the burning need for books in developing countries that strive for increased literacy and through it for advancement in science and technology,as well as the need to maintain lifetimereading habitsessential to universal cultural advancementin developed and developing countries alike. While Professor Escarpit and I have both written parts of this book,we both acknowledge that in our writing and joint editing we have been greatly assisted by the co-operationand assistance of others who have specialized in the various fields of our investigation. Those involved are too numerous to list (except as we do by occasional direct references to their works in this book), but in this English-language edition I should like to express personal thanks to Reg Gowers,Director of the United Kingdom Book Development Council,for his help on the chapters concerned with book distribution,and to Peter Barnard,a specialistin printing and book production techniques in developing countries,for his contributions in this highly technical area. To these two, and to the many others, necessarily unnamed, I wish to recok m y deep gratitude. Those unnamed will,I hope, nevertheless recbgnize their effect on m y thinking over the years, making me aware,of the needs of developing and developed

countries alike,and pointing theways towardsthe needed solutions, and will understand the depth of m y gratitude. There is, fortunately, a large number of book-knowledgeable people, throughout the world, who willingly give their services to the abatement of the book hunger, and that I name only two of them in this brief acknowledgement-two who were of particular help to me in m y part in the writing and editing of this book-will merely serve to underline the impossibility of naming them all. For their name is legion-and that gives the greatest hope for the rapid end of the hunger for books, the greatest endorsement of m y personal faith that this can,with the practical participation of all who are truly concerned,be achieved in the next decade-or sooner,if we put our minds to it. June 1972

R.E.B.

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The book hunger In 1971, world book production amounted to some 500,000titles a year. In terms of volumes this means from 7,000 to 8,000million copies.The annual growth rate in recent years has been about 4 per cent for titles and 6 per cent for printing runs. Between 1950 and 1970, world production of titles doubled and the production of copies trebled. In the same period,taking account of adults who became literate and children who attended school, the world’s reading population more than doubled. Thesefigures show thatindividualconsumption ofreadingmatter increased.It is thuspossible to say with some confidence that books are holding their own even in an era of mass communication.But why,in the face of these figures of tremendous book production, should we be talking of a book hunger? Mainly because, as this book will show, the spread is uneven and the demand insatiable. Books and the mass media It is undeniable that audio-visual communication media have satisfied a demand which has been latent for several generations and that they are currently in the throes of a vigorous expansion.It would be misleading to compare this ‘take-off’ expansionwith the current expansion ofprinted communication,which,in a large part of the world,has long held pride of place. Moreover, in the most highly developed countries, the

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rate of expansion,first ofradio broadcasting and then of television, is showing a tendency to level off to that of b0oks.l The book,which has been in existence for more than 4,000years, is a wonderful means of communication in which messages are coded and can be reproduced, multiplied, moved, retrieved and decoded by any individual who has the key to the code: in other words, who can read. Over the centuries, efforts to perfect books have dealt with the form of the thing itself: scroll,folio or pamphlet;with itsmaterial: papyrus,parchment or paper;or with the process of reproduction: hand copying,hand printing, mechanical printing, offset, etc. In the nineteenth century,the point was reached,with books published in large editions and with newspapers, when a communications network had been established which satisfied the needs ofindustrial society. This,ofcourse,had its counterpart.For the machine to work,the ‘decoding’technique had to be popularized.All over the world,the movement towards mass literacy went hand in hand with the development ofbooks and newspapers.Thiswas a vital necessity so that the social mechanism could have the information circuitsindispensable to its smooth running.The progress of education,compulsory schooling and literacy, for example, created new needs. At the beginning of the twentieth century, practically all the developed world’s communicationswere channelled through books and newspapers. At this stage,saturation was reached.This was due to theponderousness of the machinery for distribution among a public continually on theincrease,and also to the relative slowness ofthe ‘coding’ and ‘decoding’process in a world where it was becoming essential to save time.The printed communications system, progressively saturated in the first half of the twentieth century, began to fail, bringing about a general crisis in the newspaper world and publishing. Simultaneously audio-visualmeans ofcommunication made their appearance.Quickly they took over a large share ofthe responsibil1. In 1967, the increase in the number of television sets was of the order of 5 per cent in the United States of America and 4 per cent in the United Kingdom.

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ities which the written word had been carrying and which it was no longer able to shoulder.This reliefwas effective in the first place because it made it possible to grasp an event immediately,whether the happening was fact or fiction.Newspapers were more directly affected by this than books, simply because events are the domain of newspapers. Finding themselves freed from the concern of covering topical events as closely as possible, newspapers sought a new balance with radio and television broadcasting either by providing considered comments or by comparative news presentation. Where books were concerned,the consequences were slower to show themselves. They were also more complex. So far as the contents go,it is likely,for example,that coming years may see a certain regression or at least,a change in fictional literature. This is no doubt because informative literature,suchas essays,reporting, histories and works of popularization,better satisfies the needs of a public whose horizons have suddenly expanded. There are no limitsto the questions which radio and television can ask but it is more difficult for them to provide the constituents of an answer. In any case,the pressing problem facing books is how to keep up with information which is proliferating, obsessional,with a temporary and,by definition,fleeting import. This applies not only to “information’books but also to fiction, which reflects the living world and even anticipates social and technological changes. Books have also been transformed in the material sense.A real book revolution was beginning in the years immediately preceding the Second World War,but it has developed especially since 1950, affecting manufacturing techniques and distributing methods and showing itself,more particularly, in the appearance of the paperback. The paperback,which is produced in very large numbers,is sold at a price suited to the purchasing power of the masses and distributed through a network ofsales agentswhich,while including bookshops, has many outlets having little in common with the traditional bookshop. The mass-audiencebook has placed within the grasp of countless readers immense treasures of science and culture hitherto denied to theni. In addition,the boundaries between the various types of intellectual output have become less marked.The paperback is as

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much a vehicle for popular fiction as for educational material and as much for the classics as for technical handbooks and research publications, even though paperback prices must necessarily be influenced by the number of copies that can be printed at one time-the popular paperback novel,printed in 100,000copies,thus naturally being priced much more cheaply than a scientific paperback printed in only 15,000copies.Nowadays,books can no longer be treated separately from other communicationsmedia.In a large variety of ways, such as by the use of colour illustrations,the support of visual or sound material and publication in periodical forms, books are acquiring something of the flexibility of audiovisual media with which they have increasingly closer links. As a general rule,the development of radio broadcasting and especially of television increases readership and creates a demand for books in direct proportion to the size of the audio-visualnetwork. In fact,what characterizesthe audio-visualmedia of the present time is that the coding and decoding of information is almost entirely automatic and requires only a minimum of initiativewhen received. The response of the recipient is of only secondary importance to the way the system works,and feedback to the broadcaster exists only in a precarious and marginal fashion,if it exists at all. In addition, the rate of reception and the order of chronological sequences have been k e d once and for all,which makes it difficult to reconstruct the message on arrival and to fit it into an independent system of thought. Thisis why it is impossible,when audio-visualmedia are used for teaching or for artistic transmission, to dispense with the written element such as the report,the commentary,the duplicated lesson or the book. Written communication seems to be an irreplaceable compromise between the demands of dissemination and those of feedback.Even on a large scale,reading is an act corresponding to the act of writing. It cannot be reduced to a simple receiving mechanism. The recipient has to show some initiative and, in this respect, reading is an element of progress. Books,having lost their former monopoly and having thus been freed from their bonds, have in some respects become the hub of modern communications. It may be necessary however to find a new kind of book.

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In countries which have been developed for a long time,people still have an attitude towards books which goes back to the time when they were instruments for the internal communication of a culture of initiation reserved for the reading élite. Through force ofcircumstances,books have gone down into the market-place,but they will long remain the prisoners of their myths and legends.To some extent, even in the most developed countries,reading books is still regarded as a kind of weak sophistication,indulged in primarily by those incapable of physical labour. In contrast,countries which began their development during the last few decades do not need to take the ‘longway round’,which the written word represents, in order to meet the first urgent demands of mass communication. Untrammelled by pre-existing situations,vested interests or established organizations, they can choose,within the limitsoftheir material resources,more advanced solutions than were open to countries which have preceded them along the road to development. However, the more they take the audio-visual‘short cut’,the more urgent and immediate will be their need of books, which alone make it possible to consolidate gains and move forward. Here is where the real problems arise.The developing countries, through their efforts in the provision of schooling and the encouragement of literacy, are preparing people to read books, but they lack the means of producing the needed books. Experience indicates that the development of the audio-visual network in a country depends directly on the growth of that country’s gross national product, whereas the impact of economic progress on reading becomes apparent only after a long interval of time and does not make itself fully felt until the reading public has grown large enough to stimulate its own producers. It follows from this that the position of books in the world shows marked inequalities if considered by regions rather than globally.With an ever-wideningneed for reading material,we find areas of abundance,areas of scarcity and areas of famine. Anatomy of scarcity Statistics available to Unesco in 1969 showed that out of 500,000or so book titles produced in the

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world, about 225,000or 45.4per cent originated in the countries of Europe, including the United Kingdom but excluding the USSR.l This region, however, represented at that time scarcely 13 per cent of the world’s population. There is a lack o€ balance here for which many causes can be found, notably the division of Europe into twenty or so independent literary workshops, its intellectual influence and its high level of development. W e can also see in that situation the survival ofproductive and distributive mechanisms resulting from its former political supremacy. If these were sufficient explanations,the lack of balance should tend to disappear as the ex-colonialworld establishes its cultural and economic independence. But that is not the case. For as long as comparable figures have been available,very little change has been noted in the situation. In 1955, Europe represented 15.2 per cent of world population and produced 46 per cent of the world’s books. It has also to be noted that the very slight reduction of 0.6 per cent observed in 1969 concerning European books is not the result of progress made by the new countries but rather the result of the expansion of the book industry in regions which have been developed for a long time. Ifwe consider the thirty-fourcountries made up by the countries of Europe,the U.S.S.R., the United States of America, Canada, Australia,New Zealand and Japan,we find that in 1969 they produced 81 per cent of the world’s books (i.e. titles) although they represented about 30 per cent of the world’s population. This means that all the other countries of the world, or 70 per cent of the population,produced at that time only 19 per cent of the total number of titles. Although Unesco’s statistics for 1969 refer only to eighty-nine book-producing Member States of the Organization (out of 125 Member States and three Associate Members) and although they do not mention certain non-member countries which have a large production, estimates can be made for the various regions of the world and for the world as a whole. Using figures covering a period of twenty years as a basis, we can get an idea of the shortage which affects more than two-thirds of the human race and see how it came about. It can be calculated 1. Unesco statistics have a separate section for the U.S.S.R.

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that in 1950, Africa, Latin America and Asia (without Japan) contained about 37 per cent of the world’s literate adults and 42per cent of the school population.At that time,these areas were producing 24 per cent of the world’s books. Around 1970,they were producing only 19 per cent, as shown above, although they contained about 50 per cent of the literate adults and 63 per cent of the children at school. A general picture emerges from these facts: one-halfof those persons who can read live in areas which produce only one-fifth of the world’s reading matter, with all the implications that fact contains regarding the choice of content of books. This disproportion appears even greater when we consider the size of editions rather than the titles.While data dealing with titles give indications about productivity and intellectual activity, they need complementing by facts aboutprinting runs ifwe are to appreciate the real nature of the supply available to potential readers. It turns out that average editions in areas of shortage are, in varying degrees,particularly small in comparison with the average world edition, which seems to be about 15,000 to 16,000 copies per title. This fact emerged from the regional meetings of experts on book development which Unesco organized in Asia, Africa and Latin America beîween 1966 and 1969. The experts who met in Tokyo in May 1966 put the average edition for Asia at 4,300 copies whilst the experts who met at Accra in February 1968 put the number ofcopiesforAfrica at 8,200.The estimatewas probably a little low in the first case and a little high in the second.In Latin America, where the shortage is less acute than in the two other regions,the expertswho met in Bogotá in September 1969 nevertheless emphasized that editions in the region as a whole were below the world average although that might not apply to some countries in the area. The average of 15,000 to 16,000copies,for the world, naturally includes the long-print-runpopular paperback which,in a developed country supplying a world market,may be printed in up to lmillion copies,and also the short-runbook of poems,of which only 1,000 copies may be printed. Since these extreme figures are more likely to be found in developed countries than in developing ones, comparisons ofprinting numbers on an average basis are probably fair.

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Evuluation of needs The evaluation of needs is a difficulttask where books are concerned because the criteria vary with sociological,economic and cultural conditions. It is often found that one country produces a category of books which objective analysis would not show to be essential to that country’sli€e but which particular historical circumstances have favoured. Developing countries,for example,which badly need technical books,often give more prominence to books dealing with the social sciences than to those dealing with applied sciences,which can be explained by many of these countries having recently become independent.Italso happens that,for specificlocal reasons,religious books are in greater demand than any other category. Three main sectors can be defined,however,in which needs are undoubtedly urgent whatever the country under consideration.All three are priority sectors and make it possible to define what should be a minimum supply over and above which the variety of situations can express itselfin a variety of output. The first sector comprises educational books including school books, university books and books for use in lifelong education. It is relatively simple to evaluate what is needed in the way of educational books because they belong to a class of publication whose users are to be found within the framework of institutions whose curricula are ‘programmed’.In other words, they are set in relation to set numbers of students which are known or capable of demographic forecast. The importance of the second sector,that of children’s books in general, is sometimes underestimated. The great educational importance of children’s books has, however, become apparent in recent years.Reading habits are acquired at an early age. Children even use picture books, whose after-effectsare lasting,before they learn to read. Great production efforts have been made in various countries but it is a field where needs are difficult to assess. The third sector,which is the widest and the least well defined, concerns general reading matter for adults.This may mean adults who have reached a high level ofeducation or adultswho are newly literate.In both cases the problem is to provide these readers with a steady flow of reading matter which is not necessarily utilitarian

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or functional.Reading is somethingwhich needs constant practice.

It would be no use educating people or making them literateunless sufficiently abundant, varied and accessible reading matter were subsequently provided to turn their acquisitions to practical use. Here, too,it is difficult to determine what is needed. There are statistical indications concerning educational books. Their users grow in numbers not only for demographic reasons but also because of progress in each countryin making education more general. Educational objectives serve as a yardstick for gauging the extent ofthe effort to be made,especially in developing countries.In their case,the objectives to be reached were defined at the regional conferences of ministers of education which Unesco called in Asia,Africa, the Arab States and Latin America. Between 1960 and 1980, the primary-schoolpopulation was expected to increase from 87 million to 242 million pupils in Asia and from 11 million to 33 million in Africa south of the Sahara (excluding South Africa). In Latin America,where it was anticipated that the primary-school population would increase from 21 million to 44million between 1960 and 1970,it will probably number approximately 65million in 1980.This means that primary-schooltextbook needs for these regions alone will have multiplied by 2.8 in twenty years. In addition,at the regional meetings of experts on book development mentioned above,Unesco worked out certain standards based on the ‘bookunit’,a sixteen-pageunit which can be produced in different formats according to requirements.The minimum annual needs of each pupil and of each teacher in the different stages of education were evaluated in numbers of such book units. These estimates relate to the inventory of copies which should be made available to students and teachers in a given year. Taking the average life of an educational book as, for example, three years, dividing the inventory figure by threewill,therefore,givethe annual consumption figure.It should be noted,however,that school books are in fact often expected to have a much longer life, even in developed countries. United Kingdom expenditure on school books,for example,is based on a seven-yearlife. In this rough but incontrovertibleway,it can be worked out that, bearing the school populations in mind,the 1969 educational book

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needs,in respect of copies,rose in the shortage regions to a figure higher than that of the total number of books produced in that year in those regions. The educational book also has its own requisites as regards production in terms of titles. Should it happen that a single textbook (for teaching children to read,for instance) can meet the needs of a large schoolpopulation in a unitary,monolingual country,several differenttitles might still be preferable owing to the various languages of communication, the need to adapt teaching to the environment,and teaching policy. All the same,belonging as it does to the category of ‘directed’ publications, the educational book is used in a wider and more homogeneous circle than any other kind of book. Its titles also last longer. Although this has obvious dangers, a single set of school books could,if necessary,meet the educational needs of a whole country or group of countries using the same language. In varying measures,governments frequently take on the production and distribution of school books. In this case,the number of titles is generally smaller than if this were left to private enterprise. There are some encouraging successes in this field but governmental acceptance of this responsibility supposes a costly infrastructure which few developing countries have yet been able to afford,and the improvement of textbooks that comes from full competition often has much to recommend it. What has been said of school books is even truer of books used for out-of-schooleducation, notably for adult education. In this category, literacy handbooks have a place of their own. As was estimated in 1966 at the Meeting of Experts on Book Production and Distribution in Asia, the number of books needed for implementing existing literacy plans could, over the short term, be almost equal to the number of primary-schooltextbooks.Furthermore,once achieved,literacy opens up new perspectives and creates new needs in a population for whom the acquisition of new general and professional knowledge is a vital necessity. It is, in fact,with this last kind of book that the most serious efforts have been made in the last few years. In particular,both in Asia and in Africa,emphasis has been given to books intended for the education offarmers but supply is still way below demand.

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Clzildren’s books have been the subject of major efforts during the last ten years. Japan,for example, which has become a great producer and exporter on a world-widescale,produces from 4,000 to 5,000titles per year,and in countries like the Federal Republic of Germany,the United Kingdom and the United States,the production of children’s books is very much on the same level as the production of school books. Children’s books, however, present special difficulties for the developing countries.The book has to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory needs of cheapness and yet of being strong and appealing in presentation with a plentiful use of colour. It also demands an extensive educational, aïtistic, social, industrial and commercial infrastructureboth for its production and distribution. If they are to be of sufficiently high quality and effectiveness children’s books should often be the subject of multidisciplinary research in which specialized writers and artists in associationwith psychologists and educators determine the forms of expression best suited for communicating with children. Among the countries which have made the most noticeable effort in this field is the U.S.S.R.,particularly through the House of Children’s Books in Moscow, started by Maxim Gorky, and India where there is a specialized institution called the Children’s Book Trust. On the matter of distribution, experts from all regions of the world were unanimous in recognizingthat the fate of children’sbooks is bound up with the existence of a chain of children’slibraries and, in a general way, with a youth policy. Only a rough estimate can be made of requirements in this field. It will be noted that,even with the use of the absolule minimum of one copy ofa book per school child per year,the regions ofshortage would have needed more than 200 million copies in 1969,far more than were available. In addition,thc number of titles must be considerably larger than that of textbook titles, whose uniformity derives from the existence of set curricula.The diversity of demand where children’s books are concerned foreshadows the diversity of demand among adults. Geizeval reading matter .for adults remain. These should not be thought of as ‘literacy’books. It has been found,particularly in some developing countries,that it is books on the social sciences,

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history,religion or applied sciences which are the most commonly read. Nor should w e forget the proliferating mass-production-type literature which furnishes a host of popular novels of all kinds and books presented in every possible way, including the strip cartoon and the photo-novel.It is difficult to leave this literature out of account,for it is reading matter, after all,whatever its quality,but it is equally difficult to define its boundaries. If,as in the case of children’s books,we take the absolute minim u m demand in this case as one copy per year per potential reader, w e are no doubt getting even closer to reality. It is generally admitted that there are, on average, three to four readers for every book bought by an individual,which is expressed by saying that one book means three to four ‘acts of reading’.Even in highly developed countries, three to four acts of reading per year per potential reader is a rate which is surpassed by only a part of the reading population. That would imply,nevertheless,that in 1969, the regions of shortage needed several hundred million books for general reading. Satisfaction of demand by means of domestic production

The minimum needs referred to above can be satisfied from two sources: domestic production or international exchanges (which will be spoken of later). Although the extent to which domestic production satisfies these needs can only be evaluated in a very approximate and empirical way, analysis of data available for titles and for copies shows that none of the shortage regions satisfies both kinds of demand to more than 75 per cent. This percentage is about 50 per cent in the countries of Eastern Asia, other than Japan and China, or in the countries of regions like southern Africa and Latin Amcrica.Itfalls below 15 per cent in Central Africa (i.e. Africa between the 20th parallel north and 20th parallel south). More important than the over-alllevel is the balance between the percentage of titles and the percentage of copies, since this defines standard situations each of which has its specific problems. Broadly speaking,these situations can be reduced to four: 1. A lack of balance to the detriment of titles, where the problem is primarily one of producing enough material to print in order

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to feed a publishing apparatus which is developing satisfactorily. This is particularly the case of the countries of Eastern Asia, excluding Japan and China. 2. A luck of balance to the detriment of copies, due to the fact that thematerial productionofbooksisbadly organizedalthoughthere seems to be enough publishable material available. This is the case in South-WestAsia and North Africa, for example. Here, it is the technical problems of publishing which are dominant, aggravated by a low level of investment and political fragmentation. 3. An averuge balanced development, as in Latin America and Southern Africa, where there can be cautious optimism about production resources.Theseneed only to be used more efficiently and the fundamental problems will then be those of organization;in particular,organization ofthe market in Latin America. 4.A balanced but insujîcient development, a situation which prevails with considerable variations from one country to the next, in many countries of southern and South-EastAsia on the one hand and of Africa on the other. This situation is reflected, in the first case,by severe shortage, and, in the second,by a real famine. All the problems exist concurrently and with particular acuteness because it is in these regions that the reading public is increasing fastest. Yet the picture is not wholly discouraging.However rudimentary the preceding analysis may be, it shows where effort ought to be made and corresponds with the conclusionsofthe regionalmeetings of experts mentioned above. In varying combinations and with varying priorities according to regions,what is needed is the encouragement of (and hence reward for) intellectualproduction,the strengthening of the manufacturing side (with the investments which this implies) and the organization of the market. It should not be forgotten,however,that the estimated demands referred to above represent an absolute minimum.An energetic and co-ordinatedpolicy may manage to malte up for lost time SO far as school books are concerned,but the omens are less favourable for production as a whole. It seems that programmes of book development throughout the world, and the efforts of countries with a genuine book policy,have in the last few years called a halt

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to what was a retrograde movement. But if the lost ground is to be regained, there must be a real revolution and it will certainly be difficult to limit it to patchwork improvements or technical adjustments. It will take more than ingenuity to satisfy the immense hunger for reading which afflicts two-thirdsof the human race. The limits to external aid

The countries which are starving for books do not stand alone in the world. International aid and commercial exchanges alleviate to a certain extent the most pressing effects of the shortages we have described. Exports to developing countries represent a large share of the publishing turnover of the principal producing countries such as France,Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and the U.S.S.R. This annual flow of books from the producing countries to the regions which have ‘nothing to read’ is far from resolving the shortage problem. Moreover, it is very unequally distributed. Distribution is very much conditioned by linguistic barriers, and although most of the big publishing countries currently publish books in foreign languages,these languages seldom coincide with those of the regions which most need help. The number of books in African languagespublished outside Africa is negligible and are either very specialized scholarly works or elementary textbooks. Where Asia is concerned, apart from translations published locally under licence from the copyright proprietor,the U.S.S.R. publishes afew dozen titlesinthechieflanguages ofthis region every year and in the same region,the United States Book Translation Programme has since 1950 been distributing in its turn a very appreciable number of translations of American works. These contributions,even local and foreign productions together,fall far short of the demand. There is not a country in the world which can afford to produce books continuously and regularly in the twentyfive or so Asian languages for which there is a potential reading public comparable in size to that of a European language. The Meeting of Experts on Book Production and Distribution irr Asia, which estimated that the region’s production was 128 million copies in 1964,noted that annual importswere or the order

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of 27 to 37 million copies (or about a quarter ofthe regionaloutput) and that a large proportion of the imported works, whose total value was something like $20 million, were written in non-Asian languages. Even more difficult problems are met in the case of Africa, for publication in native languages-except for Arabic and,to a lesser degree,Swahili-is on a very small scale. In all former British and French possessions, English and French remain the dominant publishing languages for use by a good proportion of the reading population of Africa as everyday reading languages.Here,though, it is simply a minority within a minority, limited moreover as a rule to the urban zones.If rural dialects were to be abandoned,as formerly happened in Europe, it could lead to serious cultural damage which Africa has no reason to countenance. Thus many African governments, without dropping the important languages ofinternationalcommunication,aretryingto promote local tongues as instruments of culture and lifelong education. In this respect, they can profit from the assistance offered by Unesco to promote African languages. In particular,this action envisages co-operation with specialized African institutes to produce texts of a literary or scientific nature as well as the establishment of an international framework of co-operationwhich will make it possible to exchange experiences and to perfect methods of book publication and distribution, to establish popular libraries,to publish African literature and to translate the classics of other cultures into African tongues. Whatever direction African culture takes in the future, it is likely that there will soon be large numbers of people reading African languages. In this sphere,external aid remains extremely limited,whereas it is both excessive and insufficientwhere European languages are concerned.According to information given at the Meeting of Experts on Book Development in Africa, 75 per cent of books sold in Africa were imported from other continentswhich, in 1964, represented 24 million copies as against local printing of 7.3 million copies.For 1965,the total value of these book imports was put at $64million.Tue ?dei $at. in this way,imports quadruple what is supplied by domestic production is less impressive when it is realized that this production satisfies only 10 per cent of the region’s demands for copies. This external contribution is

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neverthelessan overwhelmingone.Its financial burden can scarcely be increased to an extentthat would meet the demand.O n the other hand, African publishing is not at present able to meet the total need on its own. A large number of the books produced in Africa are at present still produced by foreign publishers. Latin America represents a special case. This region has long had several very important centres of book production. For the vast majority of countries, the national language spoken and read by all sections of the population is that of a big European producer of books, even though local publishing in Spanish is also very important. The Spanish-language book market is remarkably unified. In spite of this,the commercial balance is largely in deficitwhere books are concerned in Latin America. As an exporter, Spain’s position is increasing in importance in Latin America alongside that of the United States. Exports of Spanish books, mainly to Latin America, roughly trebled in value between 1960 and 1969. This affects the development of Latin American publishing,in spite ofeffortsbeing made to establish a certain reciprocity in the market, Local publishing,perhaps outstandingly in Argentina and Mexico, continues to develop,and even if Spain were to export the whole of its production to Latin America, it would scarcely meet the minimum needs of this region.Brazilian publishing in Portuguese is naturally considerable,and of the highest standard. International trade and bilateral or multilateral aid can therefore only be palliatives and not remedies for the book shortage.They must be thought of as a form of co-operationand not as an economic and cultural venture the effect of which would in the long run haniper or stifle local production, for that is hardly their intention. In any event their effectiveness can be increased by removing the obstacles they meet. Chief of these are commercial barriers, administrative barriers and the cost of transport. Of the first,lack of foreign currency is clearly the most formidable,especially in Africa and Asia, for even though the cost of book imports is generally only a small part of total import expenditure, foreign currency is in such countries at a premium because of the priorities that have to be given to agriculturalmachinery,etc,Customs duties and import formalities unfortunately still too often thwart the

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stated desire of governments to develop the reading habit among their peoples. The cost of transport is particularly apparent in Latin America where air freight puts up the sale price of books very considerably. Only a series of concerted international effortseither at the subregional level or at the level of the large world organizations can establish common markets for books in which necessary compensations will operate in order to meet the most pressing needs. These common markets also need potential partners and not simply suppliers and customers.Itis by the development ofproduction and Co-productionin each country that internationalexchanges must demonstrate their effectiveness. Urgent measures Without attempting to set out exhaustively the means by which national production could be established or encouraged,it is perhaps possible to point to a few fieldsin which immediateeffortwould enable urgent problems to be remedied. The first problem is that of material to be published. The most obvious solution,in the face ofinsufficientlocal writing,appears to be translation. Its effects are very limited,however, since in titles, it represents only 8 per cent to 9 per cent of world production and the developing countries are far from all being among the most important translators. Translation is expensive under normal market conditions.Bilateral agreements and internationalconventions such as already exist for copyright may considerably improve the position,in particular so far as school,out-of-schoolor university books are concerned.This type ofbook can apparently be more easily prepared at a distance than other types as it meets a more readily definable functional need and follows specifications laid down in a planned set of rules. This advantage must not be exaggerated, however. Although it is true that algebra or mechanics textbooks can be planned and written on the basis of a very general programme valid for many countries,it is quite difficult in the case of books about knowledge or techniques concerned with the relations between man and his environment,whether this environment is physical,ethnic or social.

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In these cases,a parallel preparation becomes vital,enabling feedback Boni the user to take place. This is particularly true of elementary books used in primary-teaching or adult-literacycourses. Here, problems of language,semantics and conceptualization are added to problems ofcontent.To givejustone example,it would be perfectly ridiculous to illustrate reading or elementary arithmetic textbooks for European children,for whom daily contact with the mass media predisposes to an understanding of figurative imagery, in the same way as books for Asian children,whose language based on graphism maltes them more adept at understanding abstract patterns, or in the same way as books for African children, who are accustomed to the language of gesture. This is why it is often thought better to adaptimported material on the spot rather than to rely on straightforward translation.It is a practice which various exporting countries, and in particular the United States of America, as part of their aid programme, are using with a great deal of success.It has the advantage of stimulating or encouraging the efforts of Local groups of writers who are able,in their turn,to produce original works. Any government wishing to develop its book production must aim at encouraging the formation of an ‘incubationenvironment’ having close links with the reading public and ensuring that writers shall be sufficientlyprotected so that their legitimate rights and,in particular, the right to statisfactory remuneration,are guaranteed. It is difficult to strike a balance in this matter since it sLIpposes a very carefully planned book policy in which,in particular,all those concerned play a co-ordinatedpart. More is said of this in the later chapter on copyright.W e will not dwell here either on the mzterial problems of manufacture among which the most obvious are the availability of machinery,the training of qualified staff and,above all,paper supplies.These things,too,are dealt with later.This is an area where internationalco-operationis most effective.Establishing profitable publishing industries in developing countries demands investments that are often beyond these countries’resources and, even more,beyond the resourcesofnationalsin such countries.The regional book centres in Karachi, Tokyo and Bogotá, working within the framework of Unesco’s long-term book-development progsamme, should assist in producing new techniques for the

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problem of stafftraining.Paper is an urgent problem.Book production in Africa and Asia will not really be able to develop unless there is a parallel development in the production of paper for printing.Although there are considerable forest resources in some of the least-favouredregions such as Central Africa, it is difficult to use these resources for paper-making because of the nature of the wood (short fibres), so efforts are also being made to use other products instead of wood to prepare the pulp. This is a problem with which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)is actively concerned.Likewise,it is from the large international organizations that financial assistance will have to be sought. O n the other hand,every country has the chance of doing something with its own distribution circuits,in the firstplace by developing its network of libraries. If it is well used,the school, local or village library can become that centre of activity where reading takes on its true character of active participation in the intellectual life of a community. Commercial distribution should need to be further developed in the same spirit. Experience shows that the traditional bookshop as it has long existed in developed countries cannot meet these demands by itself. Such bookshops are not readily suited to the living conditions of regions suffering from shortage. It should not be expected that, developed in other circumstances, they would be. Books must be taken to where the people are who need them, and there is no reason to disregard either peddling or those occasionalmarkets,stalls or bazaars where a great variety ofpeople are to be found among whom the book has old and faithful users and where new ones may also be discovered. This idea has led certain Asian countries to develop or adapt ways of getting large numbers of people to subscribeto editions which it is then possible to plan and distribute at prices in line with the general standard of living. This is the case,for example, with the H o m e Library Plans in India. More is said later of bookselling problems in developing countries. Once again, all this implies a book policy. Unesco has never ceased to encourage the formation of national book councils in various countries. These are liaison, information and planning bodies where not only authors,publishers and booksellersmeet but

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also everybody-teachers, heads of administration and communal leaders-whose intention it is that the hunger for reading shall be treated like physical hunger and that books shall be protected, cultivated, improved and developed as the most precious of basic needs.

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2

B Q O production ~ Intellectual production

From the author to the publisher to the printer-these are the way stations on the path of book production.In that production process,the role of the publisher is central.U p to a point,and within certain limits,one may compare a publisher to an entrepreneur who obtains the raw material (the text), transforms it into a number of manufactured articles (the books) and distributes them through a commercial market or a network set up for this purpose.The last two ofthese operations are similar to the equivalent operations in industry,but the first is of a different nature. The intellectualproduction which is at the basis of any publication is not ruled solely by economic laws. The relationships of publisher and writer are not the same as those of entrepreneur and supplier,in so far as the process of communication from writer to reader is inextricably bound up with the apparatus of communication, the operation of which is controlled by the publisher. The two types of relationships converge when a book, for which the publisher has strict specifications, with a clearly delimited market, is required;they diverge where a literary work is concerned,in which case the initiative lies chiefly with the writer.

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The status of writers. The economic status of the writer has never been very brilliant.Even in the most advanced countries, the average remuneration for literary work is lower than for semi-skilledmanual labour.In the best of circumstances,a writer receives an advancepayment and increasing royalties on sales of his work, he is protected by the law and a writer’s association safeguards his interests; but very often he has to be content with making over all or part of the copyright to the publisher for a modest lump sum, and is left defenceless against exploitation. Such conditions are prevalent in many developing countries, although some of them have strict and effective copyright legislation.They can mainly be ascribed to the economic weakness of the publishing houses,which in turn is due to small print runs and low sales. This situation tends to reduceimaginativeliteratureto a marginal activity and diverts talentsto other modes of expression.This is less ofa problem when there is a relativelylarge and active intelligentsia, but the threat of mediocrity hangs over production in those countries where as yet few individuals are capable of writing. To this should be added a non-economic factor: in countries where the intellectual élite is of recent creation and in particular in countries which have recently emerged from colonial status,there is a social gulf between the potential writer and the new mass readership.It is often difficult for the intellectual to communicate with the mass of his fellow countrymen,even if they are closely bound by strong emotional,cultural and ideological ties. There is an ‘internalexile’which reduces many authors to silence. These two factors, one economic, the other psychological, account for the ‘braindrain’towards places where they are likely to encounter a more sophisticated and a wider audience. This literary exodus may occur within the same linguistic group towards a country with a bigger book industry than the writer’s country of origin.This occurs in Latin America in particular. The situation is more serious when talents-or manuscripts-gravitate to a centre outside the region or linguistic group. This is the case in Africa and frequently in Asia. It is specially tempting for a bilingual writer to be published in London or Paris,but in that event it is

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likely that his work will be entirely wasted on the majority of his fellow countrymen.Some countries are concerned about this loss, but authoritarian measures would not seem to be the answer. The character ofwriters depends on that of their readers:the abundance and vitality ofa country’sintellectualproduction depends on the development of the book industry and the inculcation of reading habits in that country. This is why there can be no book policy without a policy concerning writers. Experiments in collective authorships have been tried with success in various places. In any case teamwork is the most effective solution when it is a question of producing books with a specific social purpose, such as children’s books or textbooks. In this connexion,action by the authorities to bring writers together and facilitate their collaboration and exchanges can be decisive. As regards literature proper-fiction or, more particularly, poetry-it is worth recalling that many developing countries have strong traditions, both written and oral,which are still very much alive. A systematic inventory of these traditions,ably exploited by writers, could give fresh impetus and new significance to themes, forms and modes of expression which are deeply rooted in the ethnic and national mentality.Neither the literature of the marketplace nor the love of storytcllers must be neglected. Modern literaturesowemuch to the inventionsofminstrels and troubadours, to ballads and folk tales. But this is also the century of audio-visualmedia. These media obviate the need for the developing countries to follow the same long and arduous road as the industrial countries in order to achieve the economic expansion which provided the technical basis for the cultural development of the masses and which have ended up making literature a solitary art. To the extent that they have preserved the community feeling, those peoples who are now hungering to read should reject this solitude and seek their sustenance in the hurly-burly of their common life. The cinema, radio and television ase effective instruments for that purpose. To attempt by artificial means to create a ‘noble’literaturc similar to those which exist os have existed elsewhere is probably not the best solution for countries where mass culture is developing or is

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still in the embryonic stage.The problem of reading matter in those countrieswill not be solved by blind submission to categorieswhich reflectsocial and economic situations alien to their actual historical circumstances. A prize for literature or a well-written best-seller may establish a writer’s reputation in the eyes of an international élite, but does not necessarily add anything to the store on which the mass of his fellow countrymen can draw. The real trouble is elsewhere,sometimes in the size of a linguistic group,sometimesin a social structure which places a writer on an entirely different plane from that of the potential reader. It can only be settled by a comprehensive cultural policy;in other words by having some definitive policy regarding book production,book distribution and reader education, but such a policy must guard againstthe temptationto issue directives,particularly in the form of imperatives imported from countries where the situation is conipletely different. It should be worked out from an in-depthanalysis of the current social and psychological situation;it should seek to integrate the author’swork-economically and intellectually-into the system of exchanges of various kinds which constitute the life of a people. Translation and adaptation. Translationhas already been cited as a way ofrelieving the book shortage. W e now have to consider the problems that it involves. In the first place translationis an extremely limited phenomenon. During recent years it has in fact shown a tendency to decline.The totalnumber oftranslations throughout the world listed in Unesco’s Index Translationuna represented 9.1per cent ofall book production in 1964; in 1968 it was only 7.1per cent. These figures provide an extreme example and there may be a 5 to 6 per cent upward or downward variation in the percentage from year to year, but the trend is clear. Translation is, furthermore, a form of exchange which mainly concerns the developed countries. Reflecting a more or less stable pattern,72per cent of translations are of texts published originally in one or another of four languages-English, French, German, Russian-whereas only 3 per cent are from the languages of the developing countries. There are, moreover, very great disparities

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between the developed countries themselves: in 1968 there were 2,147translations into Japanese in Japan and only 77 translations from Japanese throughout the world, while there were some 3,000 translations into English in the English-speaking countries and 13,698translations from English in the rest of the world. The worst feature is that it is not the countries where the book shortage is severe which are the principal beneficiaries from translations. In 1964,85 per cent of all translations were made in the thirty-twodeveloped countries which are the main book producers. In 1968,this proportion rose to 92per cent. Is is essential to open up the world translation market to books from the developing countries,if only to give them a better profitmaking potential and enable agreements to be reached for at least partial compensation in respect of royalties. Copyright is not the only question,however.The status of the translator is another,no less serious problem. Even more poorly remunerated than the writer, the translator is often without the technical training needed for his task,whereas he should be able not merely to understand and assimilate the work he is translating but, in addition, to rewrite it in his native language,a task frequently comparable in effort and difficulty to the initial creative act. In the case of a literary work,the translator needs to be a writer; if an educational, scientific or technical work, he must have the specialized knowledge that will enable him to avoid potentially disastrous errors. The training of translators is, thus, one of the areas for special effort. Higher educational institutions can give all-important aid here. The setting up of national or regional translation services could,by putting production on a rational basis, enable the translator to enjoy the professional status which he at present lacks. The work of these services need not, however, be limited to translation; adaptation is also required. For this, close liaison is called for with book users, particularly those concerned with education. Adaptation does not, incidentally, involve translated works alone.It has been observed in certain countries that translations of the great foreign classics have had considerable success among the public,whereas a country’s own classics,published in the original text,have been less successful.In many cases,this occurs because

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the translator has also brought the work up to date. The language and style of bygone centuries are not always understandable to the contemporary reader,particularly in countries which have recently undergone far-reaching changes affecting not only the social environmentbut thought and language as well.However barbarous such an operation may appear, adaptation is probably the only way of bringing the mass of readers into direct contact with their country’s cultural heritage. The publisher’s role. It can be seen that under these circumstances that the publisher’srole is far more than that of a mere entrepreneur exploiting a raw material. H e directs intellectual production and,in so far as the conditions in which the author or translator works depend to a large extent on him, is responsible for the quality and quantity of material for publication. Many publishing houses started out as bookshops or printing works, i.e. their initial concern was the manufacture and distribution of books as saleable articles,They had to create and develop their editorial function after the event. In actual fact,the editorial board is of cardinal importance in a publishing firm.It is at this level that liaison is established with the sources of material for publication. In the developing countries it often happens that publishing firms have never got beyond the printing shop or bookshop stage. This condemns them to limited operations in relatively small markets, making an over-allpolicy for intellectual production impossible, which is no good either to the writer or to the reader. For certain types offunctionalbooks for generaluse,particularly school books, many countries have set up State publishing concernswhich are able to carry out efficientplanning and survey ~70rlr. In many cases, they are indispensable for providing the reading matter needed by a rapidly and steadily increasing school population. They function best, however, when the preparation of the material allows a certain latitude for initiative on the teacher’spart and for the demands of curricula. The problem is more complex when we come to literary pxblications.Each book becomes a separate venture for the publisher.The

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writer’s product corresponds only on a certain number of points, and then only approximately to definable specifications:language, literary geme, length of text and so on. It may, in certain cases, have involved some collective work, but in its final form it is the work of an individual who imposes his own requirements. One of the first duties of the publisher is, thus,to induce writers to produce works for publication,not as a kind of product whose specifications he lays down in advance,but as so many individual manifestations of the temperaments and talents which are involved in varying degrees in collective intellectual life. Above all the publisher must be well informed;this is vital both in the case of new books and in that of reprints and,in particular, translations. With regard to translations,it often happens that a publisher is unaware of the existence of a work which, although exactly what he might be looking for,has been published in some far distant country or in a languagewith which he is unfamiliar. Here w e have one of the areas where national, regional and international cooperation, particularly on annotated bibliographies, might be extremely useful. Commercial considerations are involved in any decision to publish,and they presuppose that a publisher is able to predict, with some accuracy,a book’s chances of being read.For this he needs to be a good critic,capable,certainly of making value judgements but, more important still, of realizing quickly where the interest ofthe work lies,what it offers,to what public sentimentsit responds, how effectively it expresses them. Market studies are frequently disappointing in regard to individual books, for experience in this sector cannot be cumulative,each book being a new product;but at least it is possible to find out which subjects capture the reader’s interest, what language is readily understood by him.The reputation,the ‘brandimage’of a particular writer or aparticular series, must also be taken into consideration.Excessive reliance on such criteria,however, can result in the industrialization of literature. In some countries there are veritable book factories mass-producing dozens or even hundreds of novelettes, detective stories and adventure novels all resembling one another. It is still reading matter and has at least the virtue of cheapness;but although it is

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not to be despised,it is not on this basis that a national literature can be built. In addition to being organizer,critic and psychologist, the publisher must also be an artist and a technician.It is not enough to decide to publish a manuscript and send it to theprinters.The look of the book-paper, format,typeface,cover,illustrations-is again the publisher’s responsibility.H e has to decide this from his knowledge of the work and of the prospective reader. The layout of a book cannot be left to chance and needs particularly careful attention.Similar care has to be given to revision and preparation ofthe manuscript and the correcting of proofs. The publisher follows the book through all its production stages, right up to the moment when the last proofs have been passed for the press. It is obvious that all these skills cannot be invested in one single person and that,in a publishinghouse,they correspondto a number of specialized posts. These requirements are not always met,particularly inthe developing countries,because ofthe economicweakness of the firms and the lack of trained specialists. An initial need is, therefore,that publishing should emergefrom its ‘cottage industry’ stage. Book production is an investment which should attract more public and private capital. Although excessive concentration would be undesirable, a book industry consisting of too small units can be an obstacle to intellectual production. The second and perhaps most important requirement is vocational training for publishing staff. This is a relatively new idea even in the developed countries.Where there is a strong and active intellectual élite and a long tradition of book production this can be improvised, but in places where everything is starting from scratch it requires the introduction of specific measures. The centres for book development in Asia and Latin America set up at Unesco’s instigation were wise to give priority attention to this task. These few remarks give no more than a rough outline of a highly complex situation. It is important to prevent books becoming trapped in the commercial and industrial system.Diderot’sshrewd remark that the principles governing a cloth manufactory could not be applied to the publication of books is truer than ever. In the

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developing countries it is probably the relevant political authorities who alone can correct the sterilizing effect which the law of supply and demand may have in a difficult economic situation. But we must guard against the temptations of blind dirigisme. Books can never be foisted on the public. They respond to a latent hope, need or demand. Whether it is State or private publishing that is involved,it is essential that the prospective reader has his say,by providing him with the opportunity for choice.This implies not merely an educational system in which the accent is laid on self-expressionand self-awareness,but an entire range of measures to ensure the participation of the whole mass of readers in creative intellectual life: youth centres,arts centres,cultural groups, book clubs. The only book that a writer writes or a publisher publishes with any success is one that, unbeknown to himself, the reader has all along been carrying in his head.

i

Printing Printing has achieved as many technical advances in the last forty years as it has in the last four hundred. Nevertheless the physical manufacture of reading material has not kept pace in all parts of the world with the rising demands created by the drive against illiteracy,rising educational standards and growing leisure. The result is that, while it is now possible to provide a staple diet for the book hungry,many find it impossible to satisfy their needs. Unesco defines a ‘book’as a ‘publicationwith forty-ninepages or more,not counting covers’.Not all countries accept this definition.In Iran,for example,a book consists of ‘anyprinted material, being bound or to be bound within the importing country’. The Philippine definition is ‘avolume,with or without covers,consisting of more than one hundred pages’. Sri Lanka defines a book as ‘any number of pages permanently bound between two covers’; this may include pamphlets, booklets and even magazines. The Unesco Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials, which exempts books from import duties, does not extend this privilege to printed material in the form ofloose sheets,books or otherwise, in unfinished form.

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Whatever the disagreement as to what constitutes a ‘book’,a newspaper,or a magazine,printing in the developing countries can contribute to meeting pressing educational needs. The problem is to make maximum use of existing resources. One of the most promising techniques is web-offsetprinting, a process using reels of paper :in daily newspapers up to six miles of paper in each reel. The actual printing is by lithography,which depends on a greasy ink that will only print where there is an image on the printing plate;water in the system disperses the ink where îhere is no image. Surfeit and starvation.If the technical resources of the world’s book printing industry are to be mustered to the best advantage, both internationally and on a regional basis, great technical efforts need to be exerted where book production is most limited.To accomplish this,the experiences of the avanced publishing countries are worth studying. In North America and western Europe, the vast educational and communication programmes of the last ten years have had their impact on the printing industry and have triggered not only an increasein the volumes produced annually,but also new techniques by which they are set,printed and bound.In the last decade,commercial printing has increased in the United States by 90per cent, newspaper production by 55 per cent,magazine printing by 60per cent and book manufacturing by 13 per cent. In the developed as well as the developing countries, the resources of lithographic printing have contributed more to the use of colour and illustration in primary textbooks than other technical development to date. The impact and benefits of lithography can be international. Experts maintain that despite the technical problems in this process (the effects of humidity require conditioning plants and equipment in equatorial countries), the use of colour is possible at a lower cost by the litho process than conventional letterpress,which relies on a raised printing surfacefor printing texts 2nd-unlike lithographyneeds a coated and higher cost paper for illustrations. For the publisher (and editor and author) this can mean more illustrations in a book at lower cost.An important additional benefit in the use of lithography is that only a film master negative or positive is needed to make a complete printing plate. This enables the easy

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and comparatively low-costtransportation of film weighing only a few ounces,which can be flownto the cheapest available printing point, thus avoiding the high cost of transporting printing metal. In Western countries,well over half the over-allproduction is by lithography,and 45 per cent of the total book production in the larger countries is for school and higher educational use.

The growth of paperbacks. The greatest growth area-in printing and publishing-in all parts of the world,is the paperback book.In the United States,over 50 per cent of total production, including school textbooks, are softcovered now. One-fifthof book exports from the United Kingdom are paperbacks.But,as Unesco studies on books for the developing countries indicate,the benefits ofthe ‘paperbackrevolution’,which has significantlyaffected book industrieselsewhere,have had limited impact on the countries,where low literacy rates combined with low levels ofincome are major barriers.Even the lowest-costpaperback, subsidized or not, must have restricted sales where the per capita income is below $100per annum. For the most part,these countries lack the single prerequisite of the publishing industries of the developed countries in consumer terms, that is, a ready-made market. Frequently, there are not sufficient readers for large-scalepublishing, normally required for mass production and distribution, let alone a publishing industry with hardback and paperback sales on any scale. The Unesco study of books for the developing countries notes that,in the six African countries with populations of less than half a million inhabitants,a single publisher might be able to maintain a business only if he were the sole publisher in that country,and it would be a struggling enterprise at that. The printer must gear his resources correspondingly to the economy, and to the demands and conditions which are the outlets for his products. Plants in the public and private sectors. In the developed countries,a fundamental change in the

last thirty years has been the concentration of publishing interests into fewer and fewer hands. This is equally true of printing. The heavy demand for capital,

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and the limited return on book printing-which, despite its growth in turnover and volume,still provides among the lowest returns on total investment of any range of printing operations in the worldare factorswhich have forced book printers,in meeting the changed needs of their publishers, to create larger and more specialized plants. The largest plants in France,the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy,the United Kingdom,as well as the United States,representing 10per cent ofthe companies or groups operating,are responsible for publishing and printing between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of the output in these nations. Book publishing and printing are industries demanding capital and resources which require the high-cost scientific approach of pilot schemes and complex distribution networks. These have already resulted in a concentration of textbook production in a decreased number of specialized plants capable of providing the services which the new nations rightly demand in their textbook curricula. All new nations arefaced with a criticalcommunication problem. Once a new constitution is created,the demand for printed matter proliferates overnight.New laws,proceedings of government,customs forms, documents and departmental instructions are needed urgently from already hard-pressed government printing offices and local firms. As part of any programme of self-determination,many believe that school textbooks should hscve the highest priority for production,under the auspices of government itself,although local conditions often make this difficult if not impossible. In the smaller countries,it must be recognized that the printing facilities are primarily those of the government printer, but, to quote a Unesco report: ‘Inunsuitable buildings, and from partly obsolescent machinery, government printers produce a flow of papers and reports required by the government departments.’ The shortage of skills at all management levels and limited capital resources make it essential to get the most out of the limited resources within the economy of a new nation. All levels of inanagement in book printing houses, as well as publishing offices, must be trained to deal with the technological

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changes in composing methods and printing, as well as binding, which confront the industry. The profitable interaction between photocomposition and offset in some types of newspaper and magazine production has not,as yet,been exploited sufficiently for books. Letterpress,using single type or slug composition and conventional flat-bedmachines, willcontinue to provide practical solutions for this type of book production to the end of the present decade. Web offset requires standardization; filmsetting needs the minimum of corrections and proofs.

The new school books: specialproblems. School and educational books account for more than half the production in many developed countries.In the United States, for example, school textbooks, reference books and elementaryschool books account for 60per cent of total book production. In the United Kingdom, elementary-school books, and those for university education, amount to 55 per cent. Since 1960,the total numbers of letterpress machines installed in North America, annually,have decreased by over 50 per cent. The percentage change in sheet-fedoffset has shown an increase of 20 per cent,and web-fedinstallations have increased by over 300 per cent in ten years. It would be unwise to forecast process changes in developing countries to match these growth figures, but the situation during the last ten years and plans for the plants for the next five are clear enough. If school paperbacks have a high percentage of illustrations with the text, and textbooks, both at elementary and advanced levels, become more complex in their make-upand nearer to the concept of magazine production as we know it today, there is little reason to doubt that,in the middle seventies,the book printers will have to accelerate the rate of offset press installations,as publishers will have to train more editors to higher technical standards. Cost factors: primary textbooks.

The pressing need for primary textbooks and the potential of limited,if untapped, technical resources and skills for indigenous book production in developing countries would appear to justify

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the use ofintermediatetechnology.One solutioncould be increased

I

use of modified newspaper plants with web-offsetmachines.It is a higb-cost process unless printing numbers are large, but in the smaller nations even this can be counted as a factor in favour of the process, since primary textbooks represent the bulk of a new nation’s book production,as much as 90 per ccnt sometimes.The print runs of such textbooks are normally high. Theproblem-and its solution-can be illustrated by the example of an African country,Sierra Leone.The country has some 140,000 primary-schoolpupils,25,000in secondary schools and some 2,500 in technical and vocational schools and third-leveleducation. For primary schools alone, 420,000volumes are needed. The potential for that manufacture exists, particularly if newspaper presses are used. It would be economically feasible through lithography,experts report,even if print runsper title were only about 3,000copies.This is so because many ofthe textbooks,such as first readers and mathematics books,contain a high level ofillustrations. In school books, even where there are no illustrations, lithographic production costs (includingplate-making) are competitive with conventional letterpress costs on printing nuinbers as low as 3,000 copies. Such comparisons are based on hot-metal conventional typesetting methods. Additional savings can be achieved by greater use of cold-type composition, that is, using typewriters which can provide a limited but similar typography that have the facilities to change the type size,justify the lines and allow for corrections to be stored on magnetic tape. The over-allsaving in illustration reproduction can be as high as 50per cent when comparedto conventional letterpress blocks needed for illustrations.The proportion of illustrations is, on average, 25 per cent of the over-allprinted area in primary readers in developing countries. Textbooks produced under the editorship of local authors for primary schools in their own country show the way for opportunities for typesetting overseas for local printing by litho. This has been successfully exploited in Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. Inthefightagainst illiteracy,the weapons ofco-operativeprinting and publishing between developed and developing nations can be

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fully utilized.Examples of this can be found between all the major book-producing countries and the developing nations.In France, seven firmsproduce (publish and print) 70per cent of the country’s books. A new school-book plant of one group prints a high proportion of textbooks in Arabic and French for special curricula in North Africa.Ofthe 300main publishers in France,twenty publish in or for developing countries in Africa. Training facilities are supported by the French Government. The Ministry of Economic Co-operationin Germany assists at government-to-governmentlevel with indirect subsidies for university education in low-incomecountries and subsidizes graphic arts institutions and training centres. The same is true of many other developed countries. One striking piece of evidence deriving from Unesco’sbook-development programme is precisely this readiness to provide professional expertise and training. The British contribution has largely grclwn out of the pattern of growth of the new nations with which the United Kingdom has been most closely associated in the past. A co-operative venture with a Nigerian printing group, for example, and a British firm,working with the government, has resulted in the technical back-up for an indigenous publishing industry. From the beginning Nigerian nationals have trained to become managers of local publishing houses and Nigerian writers in English have had works of fiction and scholarship published throughout the world. Ghana Universities Press, first set up with the assistance from British publishers,is now fully established as a university press in its own right with Ghanaian staff. Whenever it has been possible to work out such arrangements, indigenous publishing businesses have achieved the first step to expansion to which developing publishing industrieshave the right.

Sclzool books fou Jordan. A n example of using limited resources to meet urgent needs comes from the Arab States. In 1968 the Jordan Government asked the United Nations to assist them in both the problems of the printing industry and the urgent need to provide enough textbooks for all

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schools. U N I D O , the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, as an autonomous organization within the United Nations to promote and accelerate industrialization of developing countries,undertook the assignment. The primary objectives of the UNIDO investigations were,first, to establish the immediateneeds,in training and technicalresources, to meet both commercial and national requirements,and second,to provide a long-termplan for the industry to meet the educational printing requirements of the nation through to 1975. A first study showed an alternative to large capital investment for a new Stateplant,by harnessing and developing the resources of the small resilient private sector of the printing industry. The Jordan printing industry was rated as the twenty-second industry in the national economy and employed 415 men in thirtyfive plants. War had decimated the book industry and halved the labour force and the number of establishments. National economic conditions,as well as the internationalsituation,had atrophied the ability of many managements to budget and plan ahead. Quantifying the realdemands ofeducationalprinting,and relating these to the printing industry, as it existed and as it had to be developed-rapidly, economically and technically-was the real task. To do this,the school-bookrequirementsfor the next five years were broken down into the basic elements of print: characters to be set,sheets to be printed and volumes to be bound. These analyses were made in close co-operation with the Jordan Ministry of Education. In the previous school year (1968), the Ministry of Education provided 4 million textbooks for primary, preparatory and secondary levels, of which 55 per cent were imported from neighbouring Arab countries and 45 per cent were printed and bound in Jordan. These figures were used to forecast demand to 1975, taking into account the projected population growth for the next decade. Projected demand was based on the average number of pages in currenttextbooksforthethreeeducationallevels.Actual production had been 2.29 million books. As the books had to be printed in

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sections of four, eight or sixteen pages, depending on press size, these were re-estimated at 23.34 million sixteen-page,3.5 million eight-pageand 15 million four-pagesections. The school-bookdemand was then allocated to the production sector,based upon the size of presses of each printing plant. Itwas then possible to calculate the demand in mechanical equipment to meet the needs of the Ministry of Education with the minimum of capital outlay. Two methods ofmanufacturingthe school-textbookprogrammes were considered initially. One was to build a specialized printing plant and printing school, to print and bind the total educational needs of the country;the other,to establish a pilot plant for the Ministry of Education to set, print and bind a percentage of the textbook programme annually,leaving the balance of production to be manufactured in the private sectors of the industry. Both courses were rejected on the following grounds: 1. The setting up of a State plant would require not only senior and middle management to be recruited from the private sector, but the entire shop-floorlabour force as well.The private sector would also be deprived of one of its greatest assets-its scarce skilled operatives and management, as well as the annual revenue from educational production. 2. Both solutions would require substantial capital, either as part of foreign-aidprogrammes,or from other sources. 3. Ifmanagement and labour were not to be taken from the private sector,the training and recruitment of eApatriate staff wodd be necessary, which would be uneconomic and, in terms of the industry as a whole, unnecessary. The use of the management sltills, the technical resources,and the capital available in the private sector, were considered as overriding reasons for the development of the existing resources of the printing industry under the guidance of the Ministry of National Economy.

The choice of systems. The decision in the developing countries on the composing system depends on many factors,but two are of prime importance. D o alphabets have to be set? This has particular urgency for

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those languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, for which typefaces and supplies exist in profusion,but it is a question that is also being asked in all parts of the world. Second,what volume of illustration is needed in textbooks? O n the basis o€ the answers,a choice can be made whether to print by offset and hot metal (e.g. Montoype and Linotype), or filmsetting. Filmsetting (or photocomposition) systems use photographic methods to create the text to be printed. As the end product can be either a film negative or positive, the process-once described as providing the editor and printer ‘liberation from lead’-is an excellent ally to offset lithography, which also requires negatives or positives. Many argue that now is the time to lay the foundations for filmsetting,which will probably be used by all developing countries in the next ten years. Photocomposition and the use of perforators are now well established throughout the world, and can be introduced in traditional printing plants without too much dislocation. Experience in hot-metal composition, using conventional keyboards,enables establishmentsto transfer staffto photocomposition systems with minimal retraining and replace them with trainees from printing schools or their own composing rooms. It has been widely suggested that textbooks can be composed by drawing upon existing resources of newspapers in areas where the battle with illiteracy is being waged. From a technical point of view,the newspaper plant provides a total printing system.There is a setting subdivision and the newspaper press itself, which provides not only a printing machine but a folding and delivery system of all but the covers of books,booklets and magazines. The world total of daily newspapers increases steadily. In 1952, there were 7,000 dailies in the world,with a total circulation of 230 million copies; in less than twenty years, the number had increased to 7,680, with a circulation of 365 million. The greatest increase,both in newspapers and readers,has been in Asia, where the number of papers, excluding those in the Soviet Union, rose from 1,500 to 1,960,and their total circulation from 45 inillion to 75 million copies. The position now held by daily and weekly newspapers in Asia, Africa,the Caribbean and other developing territories corresponds

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more closely to that of the West in the first thirty years of this century. The Asian growth, both in the actual number of newspapers published and copies per 1,000inhabitants,is in marked contrast to the relatively static position in Africa, and the respective newspaper markets are reflected in equipment installed in all territories. It has become apparent that composition and filmsetting systems which, by the developed nations’ standards, may be obsolescent in the next five years,will be valid in Asia and Africa for twenty years and arejustified where there is a shortage of skulled management and capital as well as a need to retain labour-intensive projects. As newspaper installations grow in the Arab States, Africa, Latin America and Asia, so will the demand for photocompostion systems increase accordingly. Newspapers and magazines create the demand and supply of advanced technology in print,primarily because investment capital is available for large media. The market in the new countries will increasingly demand printing systems using intermediate technology as a step towards filmsetting for non-Latin-alphabetlanguages where, ultimately, accents, and a large number of character variations, will give photographic systems a greater economic advantage. Newspaper plants will continue to be the national test beds for these systems. ‘Innew societies,newspapers are more widely read than books’, says a Unesco study. ‘Attemptshave been inade to provide simple newspapers with literacy campaigns.... The simplest form is the wall newspaper.The next step is the weekly or monthly’. Languages. Typography is the medium by which words are given visible shape and arranged In easily comprehensibleorder.The languages of the world,and their varying typography,are a challenge to the printing industry. It has been estimated that twelve main languages are spoken by three-quarters of the total world population. The typographers’ problem is not essentially with these major languages since the existence of large groups of potential readers has led to the creation of type to meet their demands,even if certain alphabets or ideographic tongues raise specialproblems.Where the situation becomes

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more complicated,however,is when the printer and the publisher are dealing with languages of limited diffusion.It increases when, as in the case of many countries of Africa,there is a multiplicity of languages within the countries themselves. Nigeria has over two hundred local languages and dialects and Ghana fifty-six.Sierra Leone, with a population of 2 million, has eighteen dialects. Countries with so many local languages will always have great difficulty to print and publish books in all of them. A Unesco report says Sierra Leone does produce primary readers and other literature in five of its eighteen languages. The Minister ofEducation in Sierra Leone,in common with many ofhis colleagues in other developing countries,was quoted as believing in the advantage of a common language to make the best use of what printing facilities are available,which would offer a long-term and realistic solution to eradicating mass illiteracy. There are many valid reasons for sustaining regional dialects and languages,but,from the book industry’spoint ofview,the evidence ofhistory,and the mass literacy which has come into the developing countries in the wake of technical progress,argue in favour of the minimum number of languages (and therefore, a minimal typography) The history of the campaign against illiteracy in the U.S.S.R. would indicate this.Inthe early years ofthe Sovietrégime,illiteracy was described as ‘enemyNo.1’. Some 80 per cent of the peoples of the Soviet Union, of both Russian and non-Russian origin,were illiterate;despite this challenge,illiteracy was largely wiped out by 1941. By 1959, the census showed a literacy rate of 98.5 per cent. Literacy teaching was described as a ‘relatively easy job’ in areas where Russian was the native language,but almost half the population spoke one of sixty other languages,some of which had no written Îorm. After experiments with Latin alphabets, all languages were transcribed into Cyrillic, whether or not they had previously been. Itwas then found that,with the Cyrillic characters, it was possible to intensify a nation-wide campaign. The gap between educational needs and the technical resources of the printer, at least, was narrowed by the introduction of a single typography. *

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Arabic studies as a typographic case history. The urgent need to increase the volume of Arabic

textbooks has likewise been apparent.The potential additional use of newspaper plants as a short-term method of getting books set cheaply from an existing production source has been outlined. There are limitations, however, on the use of Simplified Arabic, which can be set on a conventional linecasting machine in a newspaper office. For religious texts in Arabic,as well as schoolbooks where there must be the fully vowelled text,Simplified Arabic is not acceptable. Nevertheless, there is a wide field, particularly in the primaryand secondary-schoolcurricula,where the products ofconventional newspaper machines can be and are used for textbooks.It has been estimated that: 1. Of 125 textbooks a child needs for his or her school life in three grades of education,98 can be set in Simplified Arabic by newspaper composition machines. 2. The traditional Arabic script requires many character variations to show the vowels and pointed groups above and below the main characters.This typography can be created by the singleletter system in a full and effective form. While there are many systems and installations in the Arabic-speakingcountries,for every one, there are three or four linecaster installations in newspapers, with trained operators capable of setting texts in Simplified Arabic.In this system,the four letter forms have been designed to reduce the total number of alphabet charactersfrom 104 to 56. All the most frequently used characters,figures and printed letters can be contained in a single 90-channelmagazine, used in many newspapers. 3. Composing capital outlay is reduced,the training ofthe operator is simplified,and his output is increased. Most operators-selftaught or otherwise-can achieve an output of some 6,000 characters per hour. This compares favourably with trained operators setting in the Latin languages in the developed countries. 4. The printing of newspapers anywhere in the world is a daily cycle ofseveralhours,with a peak period shortly before the newspaper goes to press,where maximum setting is needed and, too

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frequently, with old machines and self-taught operators, any additional spare capacity which could be used for setting textbooks becomes marginal. O n the other hand, tape-operated systems using typewriter keyboards to drive high-speed linecasters can and do increase the output where the operator is self-taughtand mechanical standards reduce the efficiency of the machine. It is the men that make the methods and even with machines forty years old,a young operator, provided he has the saine opportunitiesand mechanicalstandardsas his colleague in the developed countries,will compare favourably in speed and output with his counterpart anywhere in the world. Conclusions.All of the foregoing indicates that it is time to take a fresh look at the printing of textbooks. For that purpose,a fewhypotheses are useful.For example, products from newspaper presses are finished products from the press itself. Periodical and book products are published products requiring finishing.This includesthe processes offoldingthe sheets, gathering the folded sections, sewing them together and binding them in paper covers or boards. Web offset for book production is generally accepted in the developed countries now, but as a high-cost investment system, with custom-builtpresses. The potential for the utilization of newspaper presses for lowcost textbooks, particularly where colour is needed,is now being increasingly accepted in the developing countries. In the last thirty years,technical changes have taken place in the regional newspaper industries of the world. It is the short-run papers that have benefited by the introduction of web offset, the use of photocomposition and, more recently,the development of computer systems for assisting the typesetting cycle. The hard economic facts are universal. To benefit from web offset and other technical changes, total production changes are needed,and the investment required in a large newspaper-to put in new presses and composing systems,and to make the necessary changes in ancillary equipment-is high. But for less than half as much, the small plant,planning an installation from scratch,can provide web-offset units, together with the composition machines

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required. This kind of budget is now as readily available to the newspaper proprietor in central Africa as to his counterpart in central Europe. Well over half the increase in the Asian newspapers established between 1952 and 1964 was in web offset, and some 80 per cent of the press units now on order in Asia, Africa and South America will print by web offset. Paper It is all very well to talk about printing the works of an author,but a basic question still has to be answered.O n what material will it be printed? The present answer, except for a few exotic exceptions,is paper, and this has been so virtually since the invention of printing. As the Food and Agriculture Organization has pointed out,the most important raw material for paper-making-wool fibre, or fibre of various agricultural residues-is almost ubiquitous. Nearly every country with only a small indigenous pulp and paper industry,or without any industry at all,is endeavouring to develop one, based on locally available fibre,in order to avoid a rapidly rising import bill or finding its industrial and cultural programmes held up for lack of paper. ‘Butfibre alone is not enough,’FAO declares.‘Otherimportant materials are needed : chemicals,water, power. Capital needs are heavy,and the economies of scale being considerable,care must be taken not to establish industries on such a small scale that high production costs require permanent, high protection; nothing inhibits further expansion more effectively.’ FAO has played a leading part in helping countriesto appreciate and master the problems involved in expanding their pulp and paper industries through studies,the dissemination oftechnical and economic in€ormation, consultations and by means of direct technical assistance. In this progïamme the organization has cooperated closely with several other international agencies and in particular with the regional economic commissions of the United Nations and with Unesco. On a globalscale,there is no realpaper problem,sinceproduction still outdistancesdemand.All indications are that this situation will

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continue. For very many countries of the world,and in particular for the developing regions,however,there is an acute shortage. This seeming paradox can be explained by problems of distribution of supplies. The developing countries, for the most part, must import their paper. Even countries with large forest reserves are not necessarily in a position to use those fibres to meet their paper and pulp needs. Ninety per cent of all the pulp that goes into paper manufacture comes from conifer trees. There are two reasons for this: (a) the prevalence of coniferous resources in the industrialized regions, which account for the preponderant share of the world’s consumption and output ofpaper;and (b) the present technicaladvantagesof the long fibres of conifers over the shorter fibres of other trees and agricultural residues. Researchers are working to find ways to avoid the disadvantages of short fibres. Rapid progress has already been made also on an industrialscale.Infact,it seems probable that most ofthe important fibrous raw-materialresources,including the vast tropical forestsof the world,could be successfully processed,ifthe will and the money were available. O n a regional basis,FAO estimates tha